“It wasn’t your fault, Van. You were a kid yourself.” She licked his neck, kissing it tenderly before sucking hard enough to leave a mark.
He shook his head. She didn’t understand. No one really could. Unless they’d lived it. Listened to their sister get violated and beaten nearly to death while they were locked inside a closet and unable to help her. Watched her turn from a comforting angel to a frightened cornered creature incapable of withstanding human touch.
“Our mom overdosed when I was nine. We got taken away. I was put in a boys’ home. There was this Christian do-gooder couple that used to come play music for us. I learned how to play guitar and traveled with them some.”
“And Val?” Stella asked quietly.
“I couldn’t find her. She’d run away from the foster home she’d been put in. I searched. God I searched high and damn low.” He’d found Vanessa instead, a waitress who had worked with her. But that part of the story had pretty much been told already.
Stella ran her face along his. He almost smiled. With both of their emotions raw and so close to the surface, he could practically read her mind. She wanted to hold his face in her hands, but she couldn’t. He still had her tied. Just as his words were binding her, so were her red lace panties.
He remembered thinking that this place was hell when he’d first met her. That she’d been sent here to torture him. But now he knew better.
This was hell and he was the devil. She was the fallen angel he’d eventually destroy. He couldn’t even stop himself.
It was time for this to end. He switched off his emotions and summed up a story he never should’ve begun.
“I found her a few years later. I was too late though. She was dead. She’s the angel in my tattoo. Stand up, cowgirl.”
Her legs trembled atop his. He stood, letting her stumble backward. Her breasts bounced, reminding him what she’d come to him for. Certainly not to hear his fucking sob story.
“If you’re smart, you’ll run while you still can.” His warning was valid. He was losing his grip on humanity. On the line between morally acceptable and hideously reprehensible.
She remained rooted where she stood.
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you. Time to pay the price for that pound of flesh. Bend over the bed, cowgirl.”
She did as he’d said, and the view was enough to ground him momentarily. The heels presented her to him perfectly—her ass peach perfect and on display. Those delicate wrists bound in red sent his heart hammering pure adrenaline through his veins. He exhaled loudly.
“No safe word, remember? I’m invoking that rule now. It’s your fucking problem if you can’t walk out of here upright.”
“Take what you need, Van. I can handle it.”
Fucking hell.
He raked his fingers hard down her arms. “I get tested regularly since I haven’t typically been too discriminatory when it came to blowjobs. And I was tested again when I checked in. I’m clean.”
“Okay,” she whispered. “Me too.”
He chuckled lightly. He wouldn’t have thought for a second that the woman who probably only had the kind of sex that involved multiple contraceptives and the missionary position wasn’t clean.
“I’ll pull out though.”
“I’m on the pill.”
Bonus. “Well, then brace yourself, beautiful.”
Her stance widened slightly and he slid his heavy cock between her ass cheeks.
“What if I fucked you hard in the ass right now? How mad would you be? Scale of one to ten?”
She breathed loudly. “I’m supposed to be the one giving the survey, Mr. Ransom.”
He pressed against that tight opening and it flexed against him. She whimpered, and he moved north to her already wet opening.
“Fortunately for you, I don’t have the patience necessary to prepare you. But soon, cowgirl.”
His full length shoving inside of her pushed a sound from her throat. He needed that sound again and again. So he withdrew and plunged inside her clenching walls as hard as he was physically capable of until she was panting beneath him. She was so damn tight he struggled for breath right along with her.
Feeling himself reach the threshold of his orgasm, he pulled out and took a few deep breaths.
Suddenly she stood and turned to face him. Pissed-off green eyes met his amused ones.
“Help you with something, cowgirl?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Un-fucking-tie me.”
He shook his head. “I’m disappointed, Stella Jo. I thought we agreed. No stopping.”
“Oh, we’re not stopping. But if you’re going to hate-fuck me to death, you will damn well let me watch as you do it.”
He smirked. “As you wish.” He untied her wrists and watched her fight the urge to rub them. “Take the pain, Stella. It’s a feeling. Feel it. It will make the pleasure that much better.”
She propped herself against the foot of the bed and dropped her legs open slowly. “All this big talk of yours. I’m still waiting for the pain.”
Every curse and cry of joy he knew flitted across his mind.
“Get on the bed. All the way,” he growled. “Let’s see how far you can get those perfect fucking legs over your head.”
Van came to in a dark room. He blinked until his eyes adjusted. He was alone in his bed. Panic seized his chest.
He’d told her. Shown her who he really was and what he was capable of. Pulled back his flesh and exposed the garish, gaping wounds in his soul.
Sitting up, he looked around, listening closely for any sign she might still be with him. There was only silence.
He swallowed the thickening knot forming in his throat. He’d fucked her more ways than should’ve been humanly possible. He was pretty sure he’d blacked out during. Exhausted himself right into a loss of consciousness. She was probably never going to even look at him again other than with disgust.
Stretching sore muscles, he stood and switched on the bedroom lamp.
Bright red lipstick decorated his vanity mirror. He moved closer to read what she’d written.
I walked out of here just fine. Guess you’ll have to try harder next time.
Something foreign swelled in his chest.
Next time couldn’t come soon enough.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Stella sat in a hot bath, the heat simultaneously stinging and soothing her ravished skin. The pain was strangely satisfying. The burning ache she felt between her legs as well as on her wrists, ankles, and back was like nothing she’d ever experienced.
She’d lost her virginity to Nash. It had been quick and mostly painless. Maybe some discomfort, like a gynecological exam, but that’d been about it. She’d stared at herself in a mirror afterward, expecting to feel different. To feel something. Anything.
But nothing had changed. She hadn’t changed. She’d felt defective. It was such a monumental event—so she’d been told.
This experience had been totally different. Her shoulders seemed to remain taut, as if her spine had been tightened and screwed into place. Even her teeth-mark-marred breasts were proudly thrusting themselves forward.
She was changed all right. Finger-shaped bruises dotted her upper arms and lower back. Passion marks colored her neck and inner thighs. Merely glimpsing the bite marks on her hips turned her on so hard a breeze could’ve blown between her legs and sent her into the relentless spiral of a heaving orgasm.
She had been fucked. Possibly for the first time in her life. It felt like being switched on. From autopilot to manual.